The news, even being expected, has fallen like a bomb: the MWC 2020 in Barcelona has been canceled . It is a major blow for the city, for the country, for the GSMA in particular, and for the mobile industry in general. The world’s largest smartphone fair may have been canceled, but the machinery does not stop. What is the plan B of manufacturers and telephone companies?The news, even being expected, has fallen like a bomb: the MWC 2020 in Barcelona has been canceled . It is a major blow for the city, for the country, for the GSMA in particular, and for the mobile industry in general. The world’s largest smartphone fair may have been canceled, but the machinery does not stop. What is the plan B of manufacturers and telephone companies?
mobile brands and operators have to think of an alternative plan. Dozens of cell phones, Internet of Things devices, and other technological gadgets were to be featured. With or without MWC most of those presentations are going to be maintained, although in another format.
As in the automobile or video game industry, large fairs are an excellent marketing and advertising tool because they attract the attention of the press and the general media, not just the technological ones. The new mobiles appear everywhere, and manage to reach a large number of people. These events are essential at the advertising level and for commercial agreements between companies, but their influence at the sales level is not so clear.
With the advertising campaigns on the starting line and the carefully studied launch calendars planned since the beginning of the year, the machinery of the mobile industry is not going to stop due to the cancellation of the MWC.
The MWC is the framework where thousands of companies close commercial agreements for their distribution in other countries, to sell their mobiles in operator promotions, or even to carry out alliances or open new markets. Let’s not forget that more than 2,500 companies and more than 5,500 CEOs and high-level executives had confirmed their presence , with a figure of more than 100,000 visitors to the event.
The MWC is especially important for the companies that have grown the most and have the greatest growth prospects, that is, the Chinese companies . Xiaomi, Huawei (because of the challenge of the US veto), realme, Oppo, Poco, etc. For others like Sony, LG, Facebook, Intel, etc., precisely the ones that jumped ship first, the mobile market is not an essential part of their business, and the closure of the MWC will not affect them as much.
Manufacturers have to present their products, and most will do so even on the same dates they had planned for the MWC: the weekend of February 22 and 23, or between February 24 and 27 . The only thing that will change is the format
It is quite likely that companies like Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo, Motorola , and the rest of the reference brands choose to carry out the same event that they had planned at the MWC, but at a private level .
Honor
The Chinese company has confirmed that it will carry out the planned event in Barcelona, but outside the Fira, in another venue.
The smaller companies, with little presence in the mobile market, as well as the catalog smartphones of the main brands, will surely present themselves in the conventional way: with a press release, an update on their website, and some advertising video in Youtube.